


"The Most Dangerous Zero-Sum Game"

by stillscape



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 13:37:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna attends a singles mixer; between Duke Silver and a certain punk-ass book jockey, her evening does not go as planned. Originally written for a Livejournal crackfic challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"The Most Dangerous Zero-Sum Game"

There were simply not enough men in Pawnee. Never had been. Donna had come of age on tour with her cousin Ginuwine, and if anyone thought the dating pool in a mid-sized southwestern Indiana town could compare with the gentlemen she’d encountered on R&B tours in the late 1990s, well, they had several other thinks coming.

She put on her finest floral blouse, massaged honey-scented body butter into her cuticles and her elbows—men were like bees—and let Fassbender carry her all the way up to Bloomington. She’d done this singles scene a few times before. Worst that could happen in Bloomington? College men. She could show them a thing or two (and had, in the past). Worst that could happen in Pawnee? Jean-Ralphio and Carl. No way in hell would she show either of those two anything but her ass on the way out of the bar.

The bar was classy. Dark and classy, just the way she liked it. She scribbled on a nametag, slapped it onto the most _intriguing_ part of her rack, and headed for the bartender, decidedly _not_ looking at any of the men. They would, as always, come to her.

Especially on a night like tonight. A night with live music by Pawnee’s own middle-aged panty melter, Duke Silver. Donna had never seen him perform before; jazz was not, strictly speaking, her thing. But she’d heard some tracks coming from April’s work computer, and the Duke wasn’t half bad.

And the summer had been surprisingly dry thus far. A good panty melting would be welcome. Other than that, it would be Donna versus the field, just the way she liked it. She claimed her bar stool, summoned the bartender, and cracked her knuckles in preparation.

“Two shots of Jameson.”

As she tipped the glorious nectar down her throat, she heard a familiar, high-pitched, slightly nasal voice in her left ear.

“Hello, Dottie.”

Oh, _hell_ no.

“What’cha doing here, Dottie? Casing the joint?” Tammy Swanson-Swanson entered Donna’s peripheral vision, breasts first.

Donna did not deign to react.

“Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised to find that one of Ron’s little worker trolls can’t find a man in Pawnee,” Tammy continued. She laughed at her own stupid, evil joke.

“You did not just call me a worker troll.”

Tammy just giggled, faux-innocent and harpy-like.

Bartender. Eye contact. Eyebrow raised. “Two more,” Donna ordered. The shots arrived quickly, but not fast enough.

“Of course, I’m only here for a librarian’s conference.”

_Shut up_ , Donna thought. She said nothing.

“All the gals from Pawnee are here. See?” She pointed across the room at the pack of shrews, and gave an evil little wave. They waved back, and Donna cringed inwardly. “We’re having _such_ good luck so far.”

“Did I tell you to stop pouring me shots?” Donna demanded of the bartender. Four were usually enough, but tonight was shaping up to be a six-shot evening. Maybe even eight.

A well-manicured claw found the crook of her elbow as she downed the fifth and sixth shots. “Aww, Dottie. Are you having to buy your own drinks? That’s sad.”

Tonight was shaping up to be a _ten_ -shot evening. “Excuse me. Do I look like I asked you to touch me?”

Tammy just smiled, and patted Donna on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you alone now. In fact, I think I’ll go talk to…yes. That gentleman over there. Ta-ta!” And she departed in the direction of a very fine, very tall drink of coffee.

Donna glanced him up and down, very briefly. He noticed, and returned the glance.

She inclined her head precisely one inch to the left, then swiveled on her bar stool, turning her back to him. He would come.

In the opposite direction, where she now looked, was a sight that made her jaw drop to the _floor_.

What the _actual_ fuck.

Duke Silver had taken the stage. And he was—holy hell—he was _Ron Swanson_. As in, her _boss_ Ron Swanson.

At this moment, Donna cursed her inability to keep a straight face, and her inability to not _be involved_ in other people’s relationship drama. Because she couldn’t resist glancing over at the she-devil. Whether Tammy Swanson-Swanson had ever known that her ex-ex-husband moonlit as a panty-melting jazz musician, Donna couldn’t say for sure. She would guess no.

But Tammy Swanson-Swanson had noticed Donna’s gaze on her, followed it back to the stage, and she clearly knew now. It would be unlike her, Donna supposed, to let any surprise show outwardly. But she had fixed her eyes on him, zeroing in, eyes trained on his mustache. Ron, who was placing the sax around his neck, guiding the strap over a ri _dic_ ulous fedora—Ron clearly had not seen Tammy.

At the nape of her neck, Donna’s hair bristled. Her real hair. And her wig hair bristled too.

“Two more,” she informed the bartender, never taking her eyes off Tammy.

Ron, or Duke Silver, or whoever the hell he was, leaned over the microphone. “This one’s for the ladies,” he said, in a slow, smooth voice Donna had never once heard him use in the office.

Whatever weird mojo vibes came off a saxophone were waving right at Tammy, enticing her, luring her closer to the stage—a siren song in reverse. Slowly, Tammy oozed towards the stage, slipping between patrons.

It was going to be a long night. Donna ordered two more shots. Then, warily, she slid off the bar stool and followed Tammy, barely conscious she was doing it. The last four shots were kicking in, sharpening her already naturally sharp senses. Not that she needed any special ability to detect the crazy radiating off of Tammy, she-devil that she was. Tammy edged closer and closer to Ron, with a wicked glint in her eye, flanked by the worst of Pawnee’s punk-ass book jockeys.

Duke Silver ended his first song, removed the saxophone from his mouth, and leaned over the microphone. He got as far as “This next number…” before he noticed his ex-ex-wife knifing through the crowd.

The third word out of his mouth was not printable.

“Hi, honey,” Tammy called, and Donna honestly couldn’t say if the woman was going for sweet innocent child or…what the hell she was doing. “I didn’t know _you_ would be here this evening.”

Donna hovered in the background, waiting for Ron to tell off the demon—but he just stood there, transfixed. “You,” he muttered. “Stay back, woman.”

“Ron, don’t be silly!” she giggled. “Now that I know your little secret, I have to say, I’m quite pleased. It’s really adorable.” Her hands moved from her hips to her breasts, where she casually unbuttoned two, three, four… “And it’s singles night, after all. And we’re both single.” She giggled.

“No,” Ron said, his voice shakier than Donna had ever heard it before.

_Men_ , she thought. Whatever crazy-ass thing was going to go down between these two this time…

Donna was never quite sure, afterwards, what triggered her actions—whether it was the tremble in Ron’s voice, which she hadn’t heard since way back in the days of Tammy One; whether it was the hollow metallic ringing of Duke Silver’s saxophone, dropped on the stage floor; whether it was the gleam of light that reflected from Tammy’s glasses and hit Donna square in the eyeball as Tammy spun 180 degrees to present Ron with her tiny white girl ass, which she then proceeded to _gyrate_.

“Come on, Ron,” Tammy breathed. “Let’s take a walk. You know what I saw in the parking lot? A Mercedes. It looks just like the one you used to fuck me over in the City Hall parking lot. Remember what we did with the hood ornament?”

Oh, _that_ was what triggered Donna’s actions.

“You did _not_ ,” she heard herself say, her voice carrying clearly across the noisy bar, “defile my Benz in that manner.”

Tammy glanced up, without bothering to cease her ass vibrations. “Oh, hello, Dottie. Was that your car?” She snickered.

Steam blew out Donna’s nose, and a guttural animal yell escaped her throat. Next thing Donna knew, they were both on the floor, Tammy underneath her, while Ron—barely registering in the corner of Donna’s peripheral vision—ran off stage and out the back door of the bar, arms pumping wildly.

“Ladies,” warned a hunk of bar muscle, but Donna held up a finger of her right hand. Her left hand was where it belonged, around Tammy’s throat.

“I got this,” she said.

“Come on now, Dottie,” Tammy pleaded. She strained against Donna. Skinny little white girl was stronger than she looked. “I just want to talk to Ronnie.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Fine.”

They glared at each other for a good fifteen seconds without breaking eye contact. The Jameson coursed through Donna’s veins, like one of those potions in that wizard book Leslie was always prattling on about, telling her not to break the gaze, not even for a blink.

And then something switched in Tammy. Instead of pushing, she _pulled_. It was an unexpected move, and Donna, unprepared, yielded slightly.

“Gotcha, Dottie,” muttered the she-devil, right before she slid her lips onto Donna’s.

Suddenly, Donna understood—in a way she would never be able to articulate—exactly what got into Ron every time. Tammy was electric underneath her, not in a _making out with David the Android and sparks come out_ way, but in a _leaning into an electric cattle fence_ kind of way, with prickles and pops surging through her skin.

It _hurt_.

But when the bouncers pulled them apart with a gruff “Take it outside, ladies,” a strange tingling remained in Donna’s limbs. The tingling remained even after they’d both been ejected from Bloomington’s classiest singles night and deposited unceremoniously in the parking lot. Ron’s Buick remained parked around a corner, so he must have decided to hide in the bar, bide his time.

Donna’s lips burned where Tammy had kissed them, actually burned, like her tongue was acid. It was—to Donna’s surprise—invigorating.

“Well then,” Tammy said, and she spun on her heel, trailing an undeniable scent of raw red meat behind her. Donna ignored the smell, compelling though it was, and focused on the action. Was that bitch trying to sneak back in, behind the bouncer?

“You will not,” Donna stated flatly. She grabbed Tammy’s arm.

Tammy barked out a quick laugh. “Hon, did you really think that meant anything?” she asked, shifting her spectacles so that her eyebrow sneer was more readily apparent. She licked her lips. “Aren’t you just adorable.”

“What it _meant_ was, I am not letting you near ol’ Duke Silver in there.” Tammy twisted a bit, but Donna’s grip remained firm. “Uh-uh. Not gonna happen.”

“Well then, Dottie, what is going to happen?” Tammy asked, with a little venom injected into her voice. “Because it’s singles night. I don’t know about you, but I came here to get laid.”

Donna shrugged. “I did too. Had a change of plans, though.”

“So, what? Are you going to hang onto my arm all night? Wait until Ron leaves so I don’t follow him? That sounds like a waste of your time, really—not to mention a waste of mine.”

Tammy’s skin was burning through Donna’s palm now, urging her to either let go or pull closer. She did neither. She welcomed the pain. That might have been her ten shots of Jameson talking.

Donna’s next words might have been the Jameson talking, too. “You came here to get laid?”

“I did,” Tammy confirmed, shifting her weight.

There were many things Donna Meagle knew. She knew how to fix Jerry’s screw-ups before he made them. She knew which nail technicians in Pawnee were most open to artistic experimentation. And she knew what a woman looked like when she wanted it, bad.

Surprising as it was, Tammy Swanson-Swanson looked like that right now. And it _might_ have been the lingering thought of Ron in Tammy’s mind that was making her appear so desperate…but Donna didn’t think so, somehow. Shakira was right; hips didn’t lie, and Tammy’s hips were begging to be pawed at, right about now.

Donna tried to ignore the fact that her hips were begging for the same thing. She would resist. Tammy was _crazy_ , she knew that, and the only thing that was important right now was keeping her from Ron.

“Come on, then,” she said, dragging Tammy towards the Benz.

“What, you got a man in there?”

“Just me.”

Tammy snorted. And she also rubbed her crotch against Donna’s thigh. “Dottie, I’m flattered, but you can’t possibly—”

“You think I’ve never been with a woman?” Donna asked, baldly. “You think I don’t know how to satisfy one? Please.” They’d arrived at Fassbender now, and Donna clicked the remote keyless entry, raising the trunk door. Her back seats were already folded flat, a cashmere blanket thrown over the whole rear of the car, and she knocked Tammy in there with an unceremonious shove.

“What’s this all about?” Tammy asked. Her hand flitted to her shirt again, where it began playing, idly, with a crucial button.

Donna took a deep breath. “Now, let me make this perfectly clear,” she started.” I am not attracted to you. I am not interested in doing this with you. But I am _very_ interested in protecting Ron, and I _will_ take one for the team. So you have a choice.”

Tammy laughed, then, a short witch’s cackle. “You’re giving me a sexual ultimatum?”

“That’s right,” Donna said, and—hell, no, that bitch had not just snorted at her. “You think I can’t handle you? Please. Me or nobody. That’s your choice.”

Oh, now wait a minute. What exactly had she just offered to do? And why?

There was a pause as Tammy considered this proposition. Finally, a dangerous smile curled across her lips.

Next thing Donna knew, she was flat on her back over Fassbender’s rear axle. When she looked up, the trunk had been pulled shut, and Tammy’s shirt was no longer on her body.

“Might as well let these out right away,” Tammy said, reaching behind her to unclasp her bra.

Holy hell. The woman had a pair of handcuffs stowed in her décolletage. Not sissy pink furry bedroom handcuffs. Honest-to-god solid cop handcuffs.

“And the deal?” Donna asked, forcing her gaze away from Tammy’s remarkably firm breasts. How the hell old was this woman, anyway? And was Donna a little terrified of what she might be getting herself into? Maybe, but she wasn’t going to admit it to herself. She’d seen the aftermath of Ron and Tammy; she was prepared.

“Okay. I’ll take you up on it. On one condition.”

“You don’t get conditions.” Also, Donna thought, it wasn’t like she’d never been involved in, or instigated, anything as freaky as Ron and Tammy. Difference was, Donna had _discretion_.

“Oh, but I do. That’s only fair, right? We do this.” Tammy placed her palm on Donna’s wrist, and slowly slid it up to her shoulder. “But if you aren’t…satisfactory, you let me go after Ron.” Her hand moved to the back of Donna’s neck and tugged slightly, and Donna leaned forward against her will. “Do we have a deal?”

And Tammy’s lips, hot and slippery, pressed into Donna’s again.

“It’s on,” Donna breathed.

And then Tammy was straddling her, nipping at her with that acid tongue, scraping her hands under Donna’s shirt.

“Let’s get a look at yours,” Tammy hissed, in between kisses.

With one colossal heave, Donna—who felt surprisingly lightheaded all of a sudden—rose, flipped them both, and pinned Tammy to the floor of the Benz.

“Hell, no, woman,” she said. “We’re not just diving into this.” And she leaned into the front seat to get her emergency Jameson stash out of the glove compartment.

Tammy accepted a couple of swigs, too, just as Donna remembered she’d already had ten shots in the last hour—and the equivalent of two more were probably not a great idea. Or four more. Whatever she’d just had. Enough to create facial acupuncture-like levels of pleasure all over her body.

The last thing Donna remembered clearly was handcuffing Tammy to her passenger side headrest. But then Tammy’s free hand slid down the front of Donna’s pants, and she felt a whole different kind of pleasure.

Anything that happened after that? A Jameson-fueled blur, punctuated by Tammy’s bizarre meat scent—parts of her smelled like sizzling fajitas, others like smoked sausage, and her most intimate areas like a bacon cheeseburger—and by random flashes that Donna knew she was seeing, or feeling, but couldn’t fully comprehend.

Like _hell_ she’d ever been involved in something this freaky.

As Tammy nipped and sucked at her chest, Donna noticed steam building on Fassbender’s windows, and thought: I’m going to have to take him in for a polish.

As she slid her fingers into Tammy’s crotch, she was dimly aware that her acrylics did not lend themselves to such activities—until Tammy breathed a delirious _“Pinch”_ in her ear.

As Tammy tore Donna’s wig off with her teeth, and flung it out of Fassbender’s sunroof, Donna decided that no night—not even the night she’d spent with Timbaland in a champagne-filled hot tub—had been quite this wild.

“Meagle.” The voice was soft and gruff. “Wake up.”

Donna forced her eyes open. She was unclothed from the waist up, and flat on her back in the parking lot, with Duke Silver standing over her. He handed her her own floral shirt, which had several unsightly, crusty stains on it.

“Where’s my bra?”

“Your feminine undergarments have been compromised,” Ron said, pointing. Fassy’s left rear tire had been removed, and Donna’s bra—her _best_ bra, damn it; that thing had not been cheap—hung limply from the axle, splotched with grease, one cup rent.

“What the actual fuck,” she muttered, pulling on the shirt. “I had this under _control_.”

“Control is a common misconception with Tammy,” Ron told her. He offered her a hand, and she heaved to her feet. Where the hell was her wig? In the bushes? She started searching for it, as Ron peered into the trunk. “The handcuffs,” he said, chuckling. “Oh, man. The experiences I’ve had with those.”

Tammy was, indeed, still handcuffed to Fassbender’s passenger side headrest—though she was unconscious now, and her pants were god knows where. Her wrist was chafed and raw.

“She keep a key for those anywhere on her person?” Donna had been looking for the key, she’d definitely been looking for the key, and it hadn’t been anywhere, not even in Tammy’s va-jay-jay.

“She does not have a key. That’s part of her trap. However…” Ron reached into his pocket, produced a ring of keys, and unlocked Tammy with a quick flick of the wrist. “I do. You straighten yourself out. I’ll take her back where she came from.” And he flung his unconscious ex-ex-wife over his shoulder. Tammy let out a loud snore. For good measure, Donna supposed.

And holy hell. She wanted to find her wig, but she couldn’t walk. Everything between her legs was tender. Just looking down there made the pain worse. Finally, she staggered around the side of the Benz, leaning heavily on it for support, and located her wig under a nearby bush.

A raccoon was sitting in it.

“Out,” Donna ordered. She was not in any mood for nonsense, not now. It screeched and hissed and didn’t go anywhere, so she threw the now-empty bottle of Jameson at it. The raccoon had been doing some work, and her wig would need to be attended to before she could return it to her scalp.

Ron returned empty-handed. He’d disposed of the fedora. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll put the tire back on your car.”

“Is Tammy okay?”

“She’s fine,” Ron assured her. “Let’s go. You think she’s vulnerable because she’s asleep, but trust me, she isn’t. Get out now while you still can.”

And she ached as Fassbender carried her out of the parking lot, past Tammy’s prone figure, spread-eagled on the hood of her car. Mostly physical aches. She would be requiring a good soak with her luxury bath salts when she got home. But she ached, too, to know exactly what had happened between them; she ached to smell Tammy’s—shut _up_. What the hell was she thinking? Tammy Swanson-Swanson was a she-devil with no redeeming qualities (save those breasts and hips), and Donna had known it for years.

“Get a grip, Meagle,” she muttered to herself, clenching the steering wheel so hard that her acrylic tips nearly pierced the heels of her hands. The few acrylic tips she still had, that was. “This is not what you want! You are not going to be making a video to yourself, registering for off-brand cut glass tumblers, or wearing a damn kimono and cornrows.”

She followed Ron’s Buick into a twenty-four hour diner, where he ordered a king-sized portion of bacon and eggs for each of them.

“You’ll have a Tammy hangover,” he explained. “Best treated like a regular hangover. Eat plenty of greasy animal protein and the strongest, blackest coffee you can stomach.”

Donna did. The strongest, blackest coffee she could handle? Rocket fuel, practically. And as the sun began to peek over the horizon, she felt a little more…herself. Even without the wig.

“We’ll never speak of this again,” Ron said when they parted. “Don’t go to the library for at least two weeks. You need to let your Tammy antibodies develop.”

Donna snorted. “Do I look like I go to the library?”

Ron gave her a brief nod. “You do not.”

Three weekends later, Donna spotted a pair of cat’s-eye glasses and a perky, well-filled-out sweater set from across the bar at a singles night in Patterson. A tingle ran down her spine, and her nostrils filled inexplicably with the scent of bone-in pork chops with a dry mustard rub.

“Two shots of Jameson,” she told the bartender.

 

 

*


End file.
